A Literary Magazine

Issue Twenty-Eight – Summer 2016

By Jeremiah O'Hagan

I think the magic of reading and writing is the startling places to which it whisks our brains and emotions, most notably the places inside ourselves that we’ve forgotten or didn’t know about in the first place.

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I said that not long ago. I got to be part of the June 3 “Local Writers Read,” sponsored by SHARK REEF and Lopez Bookshop, and when I was asked to give a little bio and a few quotations to be used in my introduction, that’s what I said.

By Lisa Regen

I wake up every morning, and think that I am strong enough not to have coffee. But the truth is, I have coffee anyway. This is how it unfolds. I lie in bed thinking, I feel pretty good. The rash isn’t too bad at the moment. I should probably start a detox diet today. I’ll just wake up, have a little decaffeinated green tea, then something like fruit and

By Stefanie Freele

A place is cleared for the barber, moving aside boxes of donated diapers, baby food, bibs, tampons. The tarp he stretches over the well-stomped dirt is the green color of a bountiful spring, in direct contrast to the cold rain pouring beyond the awning.

By Mark Rozema

Viewed from a great height, the Eureka Creek watershed looks like a human ear. You can see the ear from a jet plane, or in a satellite photograph, or on a topographical map. You can’t see the ear when you are in it. In fact, in the North Cascades, you can seldom see the true and complete shape of a watershed while you are in it—especially if you are below

By Mary Black

I relax as my car slides under the edge of the large truck. Huge double tires rush toward my windshield. Screech. The car swerves in a circle. Bang. The air bag slams into my chest. A giant hand seems to push me violently back in the seat. Immediately the bag deflates, and I slump forward. The car bangs into the median and stops with a lurch. Something

By Courtney Miller Santo

Jade’s clearest memory is of the night her mother tried to drown her. She recalls loud, hysterical laughter as Jade told knock-knock joke after knock-knock joke. Tank who? Boo who? Olive who? Her mother laughed so hard she cried, and then the walls of the small bathroom were closing in on the two of them.

By Patti White

How she hated thunder. How she sat so still and quiet when the tornado came and then hated the thunder even more, and the hard rain, and even a winter wind. And how she walked in the mist and drank wild water from the gutter, refusing the silver water bowl, wanting to drink the sky.

By Wayne Johnston

I first met the Pacific Ocean at Cannon Beach when I was a kid. Tourists hadn’t taken over the town yet and it felt like we had the beach to ourselves. The vastness, and how puny I felt at the edge of the ocean was like looking into space at the moon and stars. The sense of amazement, the size and power of all that water, the sound of it breaking on the

By William Monette

Sunny California began her career in director Pierre Woodman’s film, “The Good, the Bad, and the Naughty,” a wild-west themed hardcore film featuring—among others—stars Eva Angelina and Tori Black (just prior to her retirement from the industry). Sunny appeared in a segment with another rising starlet, Scarlett Gray, in a lesbian love scene.

By Heidi Nibbelink

My husband is dead; I can finally tell the truth.

Endings have always been hard for me. The end of this story, my telling of what happened, how it unfolded like the wings of an origami crane and then kept unfolding until it was nothing more than blank paper too wrinkled for use, will probably go awry. I’ll be compelled to tidy up,

By Blair Hurley

It’s in Chicago’s Shedd aquarium of all places.

I’m there on a rainy weekday, one of those rare times when the great marble-columned front hall isn’t rebounding with children’s voices. Only the unemployed would be there at such a time, poking around the water snake tanks in the dark corners of the jungle habitat. Only the people

By Sherry Rind

Against the dirty clouds he’s no bigger than a word
and the waves of his tinny chirp drift
across the yard before falling noiselessly,
dusting the bare lilac tree without waking it.
He does not know, of course, he can drop dead